A bridge over a very troubled Waters - by Thane Rosenbaum

Pernicious ideas that shouldn’t even be allowed to grow on the dark side of the moon have become a sideshow for British rocker Roger Waters, who distorts facts with evil intent.

Thane Rosenbaum..
JNS.org..
24 February '20..

The British rocker Roger Waters’s insufferable crusade to con musical acts of the first order to boycott Israel and cancel their scheduled Tel Aviv tour stops has held little interest for me over the years. To my mind, the British Invasion could have left him behind. Musically, his concept albums never resonated with me. And then late in his career he espoused an odious politics even more jarring than his music.

I considered him too insignificant to attach my byline to—even if just to expose his rank anti-Semitism. I know that his now defunct band, Pink Floyd, was a chart-topping phenomenon in “Billboard,” that Waters’ own solo concerts usually played to packed houses, and that Pink Floyd was inducted into Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

All those accolades, however, can become overshadowed when artists take the risk of venturing too far into global politics, when their music takes a backseat to their causes and when they go about it dishonestly. In such times, the treble clef gets replaced by the trouble maker.

And that’s what Waters has become. His vocal range has coarsened and become more limited, and yet he won’t keep his mouth shut—not as a singer, but as a virtue signaller. His act has become an act, his concerts merely an excuse to remain relevant not for the sake of his catalogue of music, but to engage in anti-Zionist agitation.

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Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society.